PLEASE NOTE “THE ANDREW MARR SHOW” MUST BE CREDITED IF ANY PART OF THIS TRANSCRIPT IS USED THE ANDREW MARR SHOW INTERVIEW: IAIN DUNCAN SMITH, MP WORK AND PENSIONS SECRETARY NOVEMBER 4th 2012 ANDREW MARR: Along with tackling the welfare deficit, reform is one of the government’s key priorities, and it is something of a personal mission for the cabinet minister in charge, Iain Duncan Smith. After leading the Conservatives in opposition, he spent years researching poverty and welfare dependency and he’s now implementing radical plans which he says are going to make work pay. From next year, a great bundle of state benefits are going to be replaced by a single universal credit, and for the first time there’ll be a cap on what any household can claim. And now Mr Duncan Smith wants to cap the number of children whose parents get benefits. Popular ideas, but are they all going to be working in practice? Iain Duncan Smith is here. Good morning to you. IAIN DUNCAN SMITH Andrew, morning. ANDREW MARR: Good morning. One of the criticisms that’s been made of the new plans is that a lot of people are expected, in fact everybody’s expected to do this by computer, to log on. Now there are something like 8 million British people who are not online at the moment and many more who are incompetent online. Are you not putting far too 1 much faith in computers? IAIN DUNCAN SMITH Well actually no. The thing is here, first of all, what we want to do is we’re setting a system here which is much easier to enter. At the moment you can end up with forty or fifty pages for every single application for different benefits. There’ll be one application, so one set of instructions. On the computer, it will tug you through every single requirement, give you a chance. So, first of all, the simplicity is critical because people will understand what they get and they’ll get a summary of what they’re due immediately. ANDREW MARR: And if you haven’t got a computer and you haven’t ever been online before, what do you do? IAIN DUNCAN SMITH Well two or three things, first of all. We are putting a huge amount of access devices into all the job centres, number one. Secondly, we’re going to work with groups like CAB and the councils to make sure in all of their set-ups there is always access to an online device that will get you into the system. Third, we are now already working to get … First of all, you know about 78 per cent of all of those people who receive benefits are actually already online; 48 per cent actually do something online regularly. We find that most people are capable of going online. So now we have to deal with a sub-set of people who aren’t online. And here’s the good thing about it - we’ll be working with them over the next four or five years to get them up to about 80 per cent in total who will actually use this system online - because we now know between 70 and 90 per cent of all of the jobs out there require some kind of online skill. If you don’t have that online skill, you’re locked out of the labour market. Now that’s going to get more and more. ANDREW MARR: So you’re in trouble anyway? Yeah, okay. IAIN DUNCAN SMITH So to do this is a good impetus for us to get all those people who are in difficulty to at 2 least learn and understand who to use computers. And it frees them. If you talk to people like Martha Lane Fox, she will tell you that there’s at least £60 billion missing in the British economy because we don’t have enough people online. So it’s a big net positive for us to do this and we have to do this, so I’m putting resources behind it. ANDREW MARR: Standing back a little bit, I said it was a personal crusade for you at the start. A lot of people look at the number of immigrants who’ve come in from Eastern Europe … IAIN DUNCAN SMITH Yeah. ANDREW MARR: … and who are working incredibly hard up and down the country in the fields and farms, in shops, in restaurants doing an awful lot of jobs which once upon a time more long settled British families and people would be doing. Do you think that the welfare system has simply rotted the morale of millions of British people and is that really what you’re about? IAIN DUNCAN SMITH Well I think there’s been a corrosive effect down in the bottom couple of deciles in many pockets. And that’s the point about it - a lot of this is in pockets. Most people in Britain work hard, try hard, you know commute long distances - particularly in places like London - but there are pockets where you get two and three generations of families unemployed. You know right now a fifth of all of our households have no work and two million children grow up in workless households. ANDREW MARR: Which probably means they will never work either. IAIN DUNCAN SMITH Exactly. So what you’re getting, they will have kids and so it goes on. So there is an element of that. And of course I always think of immigration really on a supply and 3 demand point, which is that the supply is out there and the supply is in the UK, but the demand is desperate, they can’t get some of the British people to do that work, so they reach for others who can. So if … ANDREW MARR: Sorry, do you think the welfare system generally has just simply been too soft for too long? IAIN DUNCAN SMITH Well I think the problem with the welfare system is it was set up to support different issues and problems. What’s happened is people have understood how to work that process. And if you grow up in a community where no-one works, then it’s very difficult for you to understand that work is a vital component for families’ lives - not just for money, but for morale, for sense of self-worth. Children who grow up in households who work are more likely to do better, to be healthier. This is really, really important. So this isn’t just about getting people to pay taxes, which is often the point that’s made, which is true. It’s actually about changing the condition of people’s lives in Britain in pockets in difficult areas to get them to have a little bit of that aspiration and hope that you would have and I would have for my children. ANDREW MARR: Now we’ve talked about children a lot. One of the ideas being floated is that child related benefits … IAIN DUNCAN SMITH Yuh. ANDREW MARR: … should be limited to just two children, so if families have more than two children, they don’t get extra money for that. Would this be something that sort of starts now or would it be retrospective? If a family’s got six children and are on benefits, you’re not proposing to take money away from them, are you, or are you? IAIN DUNCAN SMITH 4 No, this would always … I think these kind of things would have to be done with what we call “the flow” - in other words, as you start to apply - so if you have a large family, the next child would be considered as a third child; or if you had two, you’d have a third child. About 15 per cent of all of the families have more than two children - the average is about 1.8 in the UK - and they cluster hugely down in the bottom couple of deciles and right at the top of the income distribution. Across the broad swathe of the middle … ANDREW MARR: So the very rich and the very poor have lots of children? IAIN DUNCAN SMITH Yes. ANDREW MARR: Is it right … IAIN DUNCAN SMITH And most predominantly in the very, very bottom areas; and a large, large proportion, the majority, are mostly out of work. And it’s not just child benefits because if you have a larger family, then you have to have a bigger house; and if you have a bigger house, you have to have housing benefit. ANDREW MARR: (over) You have to get housing benefit. IAIN DUNCAN SMITH You know in some parts of London, we’re paying over £100,000 - or were when we came in - £100,000 a year just on the rent for these large families. So it’s fair … It’s about fairness ultimately, Andrew. It’s fairness to say look those who work hard, get up in the morning, make … cut their cloth - in other words, we can only afford to have one or two children because we don’t earn enough - they pay their taxes and they want to know that the same kind of decision making is taking place for those who are at that stage on benefits. 5 ANDREW MARR: But this is quite a tough message. If you are saying to people listen, you don’t have a job, we therefore don’t believe that you should have more than two children; you may want a large family, you can’t have one because the state is not going to pay for it, stop - it’s quite a tough message to be sending to people.
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